Category: default || By jt3y

Where was I when I was so rudely interrupted?

I ended Thursday's Almanac with a promise to continue my ruminations on regionalism, the decline of Downtown, etc., etc., etc., "tomorrow."

And then no Almanac appeared on Friday. Obviously, there are elastic definitions of "tomorrow" in Almanacland.

Mea culpa. Thursday, Friday and Saturday were extremely busy --- my best friend got married (and won't his wife be surprised ... ha!), and I helped with the preparations. Thursday night and Friday thus got away from me, and I didn't have time to write.

That means I also forgot to remind you about the Renzie Park fishing derby. Mea maxima culpa.

Incidentally, you may remember my rant about the tuxedo store a few months ago. I would just like to report that despite their high price, they came through with wonderful quality clothes and excellent service.

I would like to report that, but the fact is the clothes fit like feedsacks and were made of material of roughly the same quality. My "tuxedo shirt" had frayed cuffs and a gray collar, and the groom's tuxedo pants were broken.

They also forgot to put the vest back in the package, which necessitated a high-speed run by myself and one of the groomsmen back to the tuxedo shop 45 minutes before the ceremony. At which point they gave us a vest that didn't fit.

Are they getting one of my patented Indignant Complaint Letters? Oh, yes, they are. I don't have a reputation as the biggest crank in the Mon-Yough area for nothing.

To avoid litigation, I won't mention this tuxedo chain's name. But it's named after a huge Glenn Miller hit of 1940, and I ain't talking about "In The Mood."

. . .

Anyway, the wind kind of came out of my sails on the Downtown rant. I was going to get into a big rant about metropolitanism, and this balkanization of our communities, and why we need more cooperation among governments, "(and blah, blah, blah)," to quote Simon and Garfunkel.

But how many times do people around here need to be told this before it sinks in? A thousand times? A million? It doesn't matter --- they're not listening.

• You can explain to them that their taxes are high, in part, because we have so many separate government agencies and municipalities duplicating the same services: They don't care.
  
  
• You can explain to them that businesses don't want to locate here because of the bizarre taxation and municipal structures: They don't care.
  
  
• You can explain to them the benefits of having a streamlined, unified zoning and planning system: They don't care.

The people around here don't want intergovernmental cooperation, period. I used to think that you could reason with them, but lately, I've decided that because so many of us are descended from Eastern European peasant stock, obstinacy is just ingrained.

We're pig-headed and stubborn, and even if things don't work, we like 'em just the way they are.

. . .

The Post-Gazette and Tribune-Review provided two object lessons last week, one from the Mon-Yough area, another from Pittsburgh.

In the first, Marge Smykla reported on a recent council meeting where residents and officials in Dravosburg Borough reviewed the results of the decision to contract out police service to Our Fair City.

• They concluded that the McKeesport police (because they have a detective bureau) have been able to clear cases and solve crimes that the tiny Dravosburg force couldn't.
  
  
• They admitted that response times haven't increased.
  
  
• They acknowledged that McKeesport has provided very visible traffic enforcement.

But many Dravosburg residents at the council meeting, according to Marge Smykla in the P-G, want their borough police back, even if it requires a 4-mill tax increase.

See, the mayor wants to be notified any time a crime is committed. No offense, but the last mayor of Dravosburg went up on criminal charges for meddling in the police department's business.

And one resident says that without a police department, Dravosburg "don't have any identity at all anymore."

Sure it does. It's that tiny borough that people pass through on their way from one side of West Mifflin to the other.

If the only identity Dravosburg had was a few squad cars with "Dravosburg" painted on the side, then perhaps "Dravosburg" doesn't have any reason for being.

But that's just me. I could be wrong.

. . .

The Trib's lesson in mulishness came Sunday, in a story by David M. Brown about the centennial of the merger of Allegheny City into the City of Pittsburgh.

It's been told many times before; state law, at the time, allowed two municipalities to merge if a majority of both communities approved the merger --- not a majority of each community. Since Pittsburgh's population was three times that of Allegheny City's, it didn't matter that Allegheny residents voted against consolidation --- the merger sailed through.

Now, most people would have long ago let this matter drop. Not some residents of Pittsburgh's North Side. One, aged 89, "longs to carry old Allegheny City's flag across (the) Clemente Bridge to announce secession," Brown writes.

In the unlikely event of Allegheny's secession, then what would happen? Would we set up another police department, another fire department, another city council, school board, municipal authority, etc., etc., etc?

Why don't we just abandon the entire region and turn it back over to the Delawares and Shawnees? Heck, they had large regional governments back in the 1600s and 1700s. Could they really do a worse job?

. . .

I had drinks last night with a friend and Alert Reader who's leaving the area, along with his lovely wife, for work reasons.

He's convinced that there is a Ring of Stupidity, centered at Downtown Pittsburgh, and stretching roughly to Butler, Youngstown, Waynesburg and Greensburg. This natural force, perhaps caused by steel mill pollution, prevents people living within the ring from acting in their own self-interest.

You know, he might be onto something.